For Pocono government workers, it's still a man's world

Sunday

May 20, 2012 at 12:01 AM

If you're a public employee in the Poconos, it pays be a man.

VINNY VELLA

If you're a public employee in the Poconos, it pays be a man.

A Pocono Record analysis of full-time salary data for public employees in Monroe and Pike counties revealed that more than twice as many men earned six-figure salaries in 2011 as women in similar positions.

A Pocono Record analysis found:

Of the public employees earning $100,000 or more, 112 were men and 54 were women. Overall in the public sector in 2011, the median salary for men was $46,139.65; for women, it was $41,059.90. In job categories most heavily populated by women, such as teachers and office/clerical titles, men still had higher median salaries.

But with every set of statistics, there are outliers, like Candis Finan, the superintendent of Delaware Valley School District.

In 2011, Finan earned $201,220, making her the second-highest paid public employee in the two counties.

Ironically, she says her high salary is the direct result of gender bias.

Finan became the district's superintendent before the 1997-98 school year after serving as one of its assistant superintendents for more than a decade. When she was offered the promotion, she was told she wouldn't get a raise and would be working without any assistant superintendents.

"They would never have asked a man to do that," Finan said. "But being stubborn and determined, I told myself, 'I'll show them I can do it.'"

After 14 years on the job, Finan still doesn't have any assistants.

"The school board has rewarded me through the years," she said. "Yes, my salary is high, but they're paying me to do the job that two, sometimes three, people do in other districts. That doesn't show up in the raw numbers."

At this point in her career, Finan, who has announced her retirement, is confident that her gender no longer plays a role in how she's treated. But she can't say the same for her younger colleagues.

"My board sees me as a superintendent, not as a female," she said. "Someone new, however, could face the same circumstances I did all those years ago. I don't think that gender bias has been totally eliminated in 2012."

The idea of women earning less than men seems like a holdout from a time when Kennedy was in office and man dreamed of reaching the moon, but it's still a reality today.

According to 2010 Census data, American women as a whole earn 77.4 cents for every dollar men earn.

Pennsylvania is on track with that national average, with women earning 77.3 cents on the male dollar, according to the data.

"It's a problem we struggle with, especially in the public sector, where women have made up a considerable portion of the work force," said Donna Addkinson, president and CEO of Wider Opportunities for Women, a national nonprofit that advocates for women in the workplace.

"While some of the wage gap can be explained easily, there are factors contributing to the disparity that defy definition."

The most prominent "explainable" factor according to Addkinson is the job categories women are clustered into. A WOW analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data found that women were most heavily concentrated in jobs as secretaries or other clerical workers, registered nurses and elementary and middle school teachers.

This contrasts with male-dominated job categories like managerial and supervisory positions, which, on average, pay higher salaries. This difference in wages is justified by the experience, education and skills required to attain these positions.

What's interesting, however, is that men working in education, clerical and other female-dominant positions earn more than the women who outnumber them.

In Monroe and Pike, for example, there are almost three times as many women teaching in public school classrooms as there are men, but male teachers earn, on average, an extra $1,500.

And therein lies Addkinson's "unexplainable" factor.

"To think that this culture still exists is unfortunate," she said. "In addition to women not earning the same as men immediately, it's also a matter of what happens over a lifetime in terms of retirement or Social Security. That's a very large multiplier effect."

And, yes, it is against the law to pay men a higher wage than women. However, the legislation that governs this concept is somewhat flimsy.

There are two major pieces of wage legislation: the Equal Pay Act of 1963 and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The Equal Pay Act mandates, simply, that men and women who are doing the same work for the same employer under the same conditions have to be compensated equally. It was superseded by the Civil Rights Act, which actively seeks to eliminate discrimination (be it gender- race- or religion-based) in all areas of the workplace, including salaries among similar positions, hiring practices and promotions.

According to Linda Meric, executive director for 9to5 National Association of Working Women, an organization providing legal counsel and other career services to women, Title VII amended the law to prohibit discrimination against women on the basis of their traditional role as family caregivers.

"It fights against policies that make it impossible for people to have responsibilities at home and keep their job," she said. "Women can't be punished in the workplace for caring for a child or parent with a medical condition."

Meric said that gender discrimination continues to be a problem in spite of this decades-old legislation because the act is complainant-based, meaning that workers have to fight against injustices themselves. There's currently no oversight from the federal government in ensuring that employers are compliant.

"Not only is (Title VII) complainant-based, but the complainant only has a limited amount of time to file a lawsuit," Meric said.

"Furthermore, many employers actively discourage their employees from discussing salary information with each other for the sake of privacy. How can a woman discover a wage gap if she has no idea what the man working next to her is earning?"

A development in the legislation has improved these conditions.

In 2007, Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. employee Lilly Ledbetter brought a case to the U.S. Supreme Court claiming that she received a lower salary than her similarly titled male co-workers. Although it was later proven that Ledbetter was correct, the court ruled against her because she failed to meet Title VII's 180-day statute of limitation.

Ledbetter continued to campaign for equal wages and was vindicated in 2009, when President Obama signed the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act into law. Under the Act, the 180-day period resets every time the complainant receives a discriminatory paycheck.

But is it enough? The truth is in the numbers.

"We've come a long way in recognizing the role of women in the workplace," Meric said. "But to think that everything is ideal in modern society is a mistake."